Would you still enjoy your banana, avocado or chocolate if you knew that it was harvested by children who are forced to work?
Our food must meet high legal quality standards to ensure it’s safe to eat.. but, erm, what about the people who produce it? Do they get the same protection?
Well.. no. In the food industry, human rights are systematically and widely violated.
To make chocolate, for example. The economic system in the cocoa industry is driven by profit maximization. Too little is paid for cocoa beans, causing cocoa farmers and their families in West Africa to live in poverty.
In order to survive, many cocoa farmers have no choice but to let their children do dangerous work on their plantations or worse - exploit others with forced labour.
In Ghana and Ivory Coast there are more than 30,000 victims of modern slavery who forced to work on cocoa plantations
1. And 2.1 million children work under illegal conditions
2.
Self-regulation. That has been the reaction of the industry and politicians. But the only thing self-regulation has delivered is pilots, tests and a lot of hot air. Intentions. Promises. But little concrete action or change.
19 years ago, Big Choco promised to end child labour in their supply chains
3. They failed and missed deadline after deadline after deadline after deadline.
Our economic system is failing: we have to do something. It’s time for everyone to take responsibility.
- It is our responsibility as consumers to know who we’re buying products from.
- It is our responsibility as companies to ensure that the risk of illegal child labour and modern slavery in the products we sell is zero
- It is our responsibility as governments to ensure that companies are held accountable for human rights violations by law.
With this petition we say YES. YES: I want laws that make companies 100% responsible for eliminating modern slavery and illegal child labour from their supply chains.
1 million signatures will force governments to change their policies - from self-regulation to legislation. Tony’s Chocolonely will take your YES to Brussels and Washington in 2020.
That way, we'll make sure companies finally keep their promises, and we’ll make 100% slave free the norm in chocolate YES!
Are you in?
References
- Global Slavery Index, P49, 2018.
- Tulane University research on illegal child labour in West African cocoa growing areas, 2015.
- The Harkin-Engel protocol was negotiated by Representative Eliot Engel & Senator Tom Harkin and signed by eight big chocolate companies, in 2001.
